facebook organ donor jessica simpson gives birth carrie underwood blown away chk ryan o neal dark knight rises trailer dark knight rises trailer
Thursday, January 31, 2013
Orb Audio is practically giving away Mini-T amplifiers when you purchase a it with a pair of Mod 1 speakers
We’ve reviewed Orb Audio speakers and amps a few times here at The Gadgeteer. ?If you’d like a refresher of Orb’s great designs and quality, check out Julie’s review of their speakers, and my reviews of their Booster and Mini-T amps. ?Orb Audio has just released their 2013 Mini-T amplifier, and they’re making a special [...]
Wednesday, January 30, 2013
Business Development manager | Internet Marketing | Sales ...
Tax Type Tax Rate Tax ID or Company no.
eg. VAT, GST ? Registration no.
slither naacp glen campbell jerusalem artichoke bud shootout aretha franklin stevie wonder
Prevent Breast Cancer by Any Greens Necessary | Care2 Healthy ...
Recently a study of 50,000 African-American women was published, a sadly neglected demographic when it comes to nutritional science and, in fact, medical research generally. Certain African populations were among the healthiest on Earth, inspiring one of America?s lifestyle medicine pioneers Nathan Pritikin (see my 2-min. video?Engineering a Cure). Sadly, African-Americans currently suffer disproportionately from chronic diseases. The good news is that many of the diseases?such as high blood pressure and diabetes?can be prevented, stopped, and even reversed with a healthy plant-based diet.
The Black Women?s Health Study investigated fruit and vegetable intake in relation to risk of breast cancer. Those who listened to mom and ate their veggies had a significantly lower risk of the most difficult type of breast cancer to treat (estrogen-receptor negative). Were any plants found particularly protective?
Which was associated with lowest breast cancer risk in African-American women? Apples, bananas, broccoli, cabbage, cantaloupe, carrots, collard greens, grapefruit, oranges, spinach, tomatoes, or sweet potatoes? Click on the 3-min. NutritionFacts.org video pick above to find out the answer.
For more on breast cancer prevention and diet, see my Care2 posts from last week Mushrooms For Breast Cancer Prevention and Why Less Breast Cancer in Asia?
More on broccoli and breast cancer:
More on carrots in:
More on collards in:
In health,
Michael Greger, M.D.
PS: If you haven?t yet, you can subscribe to my videos for free by clicking here and watch 2012 year-in-review presentation?Uprooting the Leading Causes of Death.
Image credit: smith_cl9 / Flickr
Related:
What Should Women Eat to Live Longest?
Breast Cancer Survival and Soy
Are Bioidentical Hormones Safe?
Source: http://www.care2.com/greenliving/prevent-breast-cancer-by-any-greens-necessary.html
catch me if you can delmon young arrested the raven the raven zerg rush david wilson playstation all stars battle royale
Auction house to offer Andy Warhol works online
NEW YORK (AP) ? An online auction of Andy Warhol's works will give a broader audience the chance to own a piece of his pop art.
It is Christie's International's first online-only Warhol sale. About 125 paintings, drawings, photographs and prints will be offered from Feb. 26 through March 5. Pre-sale estimates range from $600 to $70,000.
The auction is being held in partnership with The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.
The works can be previewed online before the sale.
Bidders can browse, bid and receive instant updates by email or phone if another bid exceeds theirs.
The first live auction raised $17 million for the Warhol Foundation's endowment.
Warhol is famous for his silk screened images of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe and detailed renderings of Campbell's Soup cans.
___
Online: www.christies.com/warhol
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/auction-house-offer-andy-warhol-works-online-213052112.html
Jenni Rivera Alive Facebook Down bo jackson bo jackson hanukkah justin tv justin tv
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
IST Austria contributes to Human Brain Project
![[ Back to EurekAlert! ]](http://www.eurekalert.org/images/back2e.gif){kind=small}
Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Oliver Lehmann
oliver.lehmann@ist.ac.at
43-676-401-2562
Institute of Science and Technology Austria
IST Austria Professor Peter Jonas one of the Austrian partners in 1 billion effort to reconstruct human brain as computer-based model
This press release is available in German.
Jonas summarized the relevance of his group's contribution to the HBP as follows: "The HBP heavily relies on quantitative functional data, which is exactly what we can supply."
The President of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), Thomas Henzinger, congratulated Jonas on this success: "Peter moved to IST Austria in 2010, initiating neuroscience research at the Institute. This award proves that our growing activities in neuroscience have already achieved recognition in Europe and beyond. We look forward to many new and groundbreaking results from Peter's group."
Two components of Peter Jonas' research have particular bearings on the HBP. Firstly, many of the parameters required for the brain model developed by the HBP are yet unknown. Jonas works on cellular and subcellular parameters, such as the properties of entry and exit structures in the neuron, the dendrites and the axon, respectively, and the properties of communication between neurons at the synapse. A quantitative understanding of these parameters is indispensible for accurate modeling of the brain. Here, Peter Jonas' research makes a unique contribution at the cellular, subcellular, and microcircuit scale which directly impacts on the HBP. The subcellular recording technique used to measure the relevant quantities (sometimes called second generation patch-clamp technique) has been developed and refined by the Jonas group and is used only by a very small number of research groups world-wide.
Secondly, Peter Jonas seeks to understand how higher brain functions are produced in neuronal microcircuits. He uses the prototypical learning circuit, the hippocampus, to approach this question on several levels. One level of research is to assemble microcircuits and hippocampal networks. Being similar to the objective of the HBP, this approach will effectively use the technological platform of the Human Brain Project.
Jonas pointed out that in a wider context, "the interaction between experiment and modeling is very important. Ideally, the experimentalists provide quantitative information about key parameters, while the theoreticians identify gaps in the knowledge of relevant factors and suggest new experiments. It is a central objective of the HBP to combine these two elements, as we have successfully demonstrated at IST Austria."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Public release date: 28-Jan-2013[ | E-mail |
Share ] Contact: Oliver Lehmann
oliver.lehmann@ist.ac.at
43-676-401-2562
Institute of Science and Technology Austria
IST Austria Professor Peter Jonas one of the Austrian partners in 1 billion effort to reconstruct human brain as computer-based model
This press release is available in German.
Jonas summarized the relevance of his group's contribution to the HBP as follows: "The HBP heavily relies on quantitative functional data, which is exactly what we can supply."
The President of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria), Thomas Henzinger, congratulated Jonas on this success: "Peter moved to IST Austria in 2010, initiating neuroscience research at the Institute. This award proves that our growing activities in neuroscience have already achieved recognition in Europe and beyond. We look forward to many new and groundbreaking results from Peter's group."
Two components of Peter Jonas' research have particular bearings on the HBP. Firstly, many of the parameters required for the brain model developed by the HBP are yet unknown. Jonas works on cellular and subcellular parameters, such as the properties of entry and exit structures in the neuron, the dendrites and the axon, respectively, and the properties of communication between neurons at the synapse. A quantitative understanding of these parameters is indispensible for accurate modeling of the brain. Here, Peter Jonas' research makes a unique contribution at the cellular, subcellular, and microcircuit scale which directly impacts on the HBP. The subcellular recording technique used to measure the relevant quantities (sometimes called second generation patch-clamp technique) has been developed and refined by the Jonas group and is used only by a very small number of research groups world-wide.
Secondly, Peter Jonas seeks to understand how higher brain functions are produced in neuronal microcircuits. He uses the prototypical learning circuit, the hippocampus, to approach this question on several levels. One level of research is to assemble microcircuits and hippocampal networks. Being similar to the objective of the HBP, this approach will effectively use the technological platform of the Human Brain Project.
Jonas pointed out that in a wider context, "the interaction between experiment and modeling is very important. Ideally, the experimentalists provide quantitative information about key parameters, while the theoreticians identify gaps in the knowledge of relevant factors and suggest new experiments. It is a central objective of the HBP to combine these two elements, as we have successfully demonstrated at IST Austria."
###
[ | E-mail | Share ] ?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-01/iosa-iac012813.php
Outback Bowl Carly Rae Jepsen dallas cowboys Rose Bowl 2013 kim kardashian anderson cooper kim kardashian pregnant
Twitter's Vine features porn video as 'Editor's Pick'
19 hrs.
Since Vine, Twitter's video-sharing service, launched on Thursday, it's been plagued by all sorts of woes. We noticed that it lacks privacy settings and?abuse prevention measures, Facebook prevented it from finding any friends through the social network, and now ... well, now pornographic?content has slipped?into Vine's?"Editor's Picks" section.
Vine's a rather neat service, in theory. If you've got an iOS device, you can create and share Vine videos. All you have to do is point your iPhone (or iPod Touch) at something and press your finger to the screen to record a clip up to six seconds in length (both sound and motion are captured, of course). Once done, you can share it to Vine, Twitter and Facebook. You can also use the app to browse through popular videos and those featured as "Editor's Picks."
And that's where Vine's latest troubles appear. On Monday morning, a video shared by "nsfwvine" ??an account created for the sole purpose of posting pornographic videos to Vine (hence the "Not Safe For Work" part of the name)???received the service's "Editor's Pick" badge of honor.
While the video did lose the "Editor's Pick" badge later in the morning, it was not removed from the service. Instead, it now carries a warning message declaring that the video?"may contain sensitive content" and requires a tap to be viewed. (From what we can tell, this warning message is automatically added to videos which are reported as inappropriate by Vine users.)
We have reached out to Twitter for more information regarding how the video in question?? which shows a young woman and a?sex toy?? was chosen as an "Editor's Pick." We wondered if some sort of automated process may be involved in the selection. A Twitter spokesperson explained that an actual person was actually to blame. "A human error resulted in a video with adult content becoming one of the videos in Editor's Picks," she wrote in an email to NBC News. "[U]pon realizing this mistake we removed the video immediately. We apologize to our users for the error."
We have also contacted Apple, as we suspect the Cupertino-based company is probably not all too happy about pornographic content being?prominently?featured in an iOS app. (It has banned apps for far less racy issues in the past.)
In the meantime, obscene material continues to flood into Vine. Several accounts ? including "nsfwvine" ? have been posting pornographic clips since Vine launched last week. Not all of porn clips?carry the "sensitive content" warning yet and it's not clear if any have been removed so far.
"Wow. How did this happen, Vine?" a user asked?on one of the videos, while another wondered "[c]an I flag this as inappropriate more than once?"
Want more tech news?or interesting?links? You'll get plenty of both if you keep up with Rosa Golijan, the writer of this post, by following her on?Twitter, subscribing to her?Facebook?posts,?or circling her?on?Google+.
Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/twitters-vine-features-porn-video-editors-pick-1C8137828
built to last obama state of the union address 2012 mitt romney tax return flip saunders academy award nominations cynthia nixon cspan
UN seeks major aid boost for Syrian 'catastrophe'
KUWAIT CITY (AP) ? International aid officials are framing their latest gathering on Syria's humanitarian crises in terms not seen in the region since the height of the Iraq war: Refugee numbers possibly swelling toward 1 million, more than double that number in need of help inside the country and political policymaking among Bashar Assad's foes torn between the battlefield strategies and the civilian costs.
The urgency for a dramatic increase in international relief funds for Syria ? seeking total pledges of $1.5 billion ? will be the central message Wednesday in Kuwait from U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders such as Jordan's King Abdullah II, whose nation is struggling with more than 320,000 refugees and more arriving every day.
The meeting also seeks to reorient some of the political calculations among Western nations and allies supporting the Syrian rebels. With the civil war nearing its two-year mark and no end in sight, U.N. officials and others are pressing governments to recognize the potential long-term humanitarian burdens and spread resources and support to both the Syrian opposition and the millions of people caught in the conflict.
"The crisis is not easing on any front," said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for the U.N. office in charge of coordinating humanitarian affairs. "It's relentless."
The venue in Kuwait also highlights the increasingly high-profile role of Persian Gulf nations in Syria's civil war.
The Gulf states, led by Qatar and Saudi Arabia, have been key backers of the political opposition against Assad and have urged for stepped up arms shipments to rebel fighters ? a call that has met resistance from the U.S. and Western allies fearing that heavy weapons could reach Islamist militant factions that have joined the rebellion.
Now, the wealthy Gulf nations may come under direct calls to significantly boost contributions for U.N.-led humanitarian efforts in addition to their own pledges, including $100 million promised by Saudi Arabia in December for Syrian relief and $5 million from the United Arab Emirates this month for the refugees in Jordan.
Representatives from more than 60 nations are expected at the one-day conference, possibly including envoys from Assad's main allies Iran and Russia. They are unlikely to be put under specific diplomatic pressures, but could face uncomfortable descriptions of civilian deaths in a nearly 2-year-old civil war that the U.N. says has claimed more than 60,000 lives.
Last week at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Turkey's Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said Syria's bombardment of citizens should be declared a war crime and aid groups must be given greater access to help displaced or suffering people inside the country. Relief groups, however, have struggled in Syria because of shifting front lines and risks of kidnapping or convoys commandeered. The U.N. also has pulled back some staff in Damascus as fighting intensified in the capital.
Also in Davos, the U.N.'s humanitarian chief, Valerie Amos, called the Syrian humanitarian situation "already catastrophic."
"What we are seeing now are the consequences of the failure of the international community to unite to resolve the crisis," she said before heading to Damascus for a two-day visit that included talks with Syrian officials.
While the Kuwait meeting is certain to showcase the strong international coalition against Assad's regime, it also will underscore the shortfall in nailing down funds for humanitarian relief.
Laerke said the U.N. has in hand less than 4 percent of $519 million sought for aid inside Syria. Nearly $1 billion more in emergency money is now needed for the refugee influx into neighboring nations. U.N. officials say more than 21,000 Syrian refugees have arrived at Jordan's sole refugee camp in just the past week.
"This is the just the six-month price tag," he said. "This just gets us through the middle of year."
On the eve of the Kuwait meeting, President Barack Obama authorized an additional $155 million in humanitarian aid for the Syrian people as his administration grapples for a way to stem the violence there without direct U.S. military involvement.
The fresh funding brings the total U.S. humanitarian aid to Syria over two years to $365 million, according to the White House. Officials said the money was being used to immunize one million Syrian children, purchase winter supplies for a half million people, and to help alleviate food shortages.
"The relief we send doesn't say 'Made in America,' but make no mistake ? our aid reflects the commitment of the American people," Obama said in a video announcing the addition funding, which was posted on the White House website.
The European Union also promised another 100 million euros ($134 million) for Syrian relief aid, said the EU humanitarian aid commissioner, Kristalina Georgieva, in Brussels.
"They seem to be taking the appeals more seriously now when the conflict appears to be taking the shape of a crisis that will last for some time," said Ayham Kamel, a Middle East analyst at the Eurasia Group in London. "Most expected the Assad regime would be toppled by now, ending the crisis. In reality, however, the Assad regime is still there and the international community has no alternative but to face the crisis and managing refugees costs money."
The U.N. estimates more than 700,000 Syrian refugees have fled to surrounding countries ? mostly Jordan and Turkey, but others to Lebanon and smaller numbers to Iraq. At least 2 million people inside Syria have been uprooted or face shortages of food or medicine.
Laerke said the refugee figures could push toward 1 million later this year if the current exodus remains. That could reach about half the refugee figure for Iraq in the years after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.
Amos, the U.N. humanitarian chief, said she hoped the Kuwait conference will bring "a wider range" aid donors than previous appeals that brought mostly Western pledges. She also is likely to stress the desperation of many in the cold months.
In Beirut on Monday, she described visiting a shelter in Damascus where many children were sick or had respiratory problems because of lack of heating fuel.
"It is so cold right now, health care is really important," she said.
In Jordan, about two dozen refugees moved into a school built by aid funds from Bahrain after their tents in the main camp were blown over by wind or flooded. The school is set to reopen next week.
"They haven't given us heaters, tents or trailers," said Abu Mohamed, a 35-year-old businessman who fled Damascus with his family. "Rain is forecast again. Doctors tell us at the camp hospital that our children are sick from the cold."
___
Associated Press writers Dale Gavlak in Zaatari, Jordan; Raf Casert in Brussels, and Barbara Surk and Bassem Mroue in Beirut contributed to this report
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/un-seeks-major-aid-boost-syrian-catastrophe-191711139.html
undrafted free agents braveheart earthquake california earthquake california roy orbison the third man 2012 nfl draft order
Progressive optics for side mirrors ends automobile blind spots without distorting view, experts say
Jan. 28, 2013 ? A new optical prescription for automobile side-view mirrors may eliminate the dreaded "blind spot" in traffic without distorting the perceived distance of cars approaching from behind. As described in a new paper? in the Optical Society's (OSA) journal Optics Letters, objects viewed in a mirror using the new design appear larger than in traditional side-view mirrors, so it's easier to judge their following distance and speed.
Today's motor vehicles in the United States use two different types of mirrors for the driver and passenger sides. The driver's side mirror is flat so that objects viewed in it are undistorted and not optically reduced in size, allowing the operator to accurately judge an approaching-from-behind vehicle's separation distance and speed. Unfortunately, the optics of a flat mirror also create a blind spot, an area of limited vision around a vehicle that often leads to collisions during merges, lane changes, or turns. The passenger side mirror, on the other hand, possesses a spherical convex shape. While the small radius of curvature widens the field of view, it also causes any object seen in it to look smaller in size and farther away than it actually is. Because of this issue, passenger side mirrors on cars and trucks in the United States must be engraved with the safety warning, "Objects in mirror are closer than they appear." In the European Union, both driver and passenger side mirrors are aspheric (One that bulges more to one side than the other, creating two zones on the same mirror).The inner zone -- the section nearest the door -- has a nearly perfect spherical shape, while the outer zone -- the section farthest from the door -- becomes less and less curved toward the edges. The outer zone of this aspheric design also produces a similar distance and size distortion seen in spherical convex designs.
In an attempt to remedy this problem, some automotive manufacturers have installed a separate, small wide-angle mirror in the upper corner of side mirrors. This is a slightly domed square that provides a wide-angle view similar to a camera's fisheye lens. However, drivers often find this system to be a distracting as well as expensive addition.
A simpler design for a mirror that would be free of blind spots, have a wide field of view, and produce images that are accurately scaled to the true size of an approaching object -- and work for both sides of a vehicle -- has been proposed by researchers Hocheol Lee and Dohyun Kim at Hanbat National University in Korea and Sung Yi at Portland State University in Oregon. Their solution was to turn to a progressive additive optics technology commonly used in "no-line multifocal" eyeglasses that simultaneously corrects myopia (nearsightedness) and presbyopia (reduced focusing ability).
"Like multifocal glasses that give the wearer a range of focusing abilities from near to far and everything in between, our progressive mirror consists of three resolution zones: one for distance vision, one for close-up viewing and a middle zone making the transition between the two," says Lee. "However, unlike glasses where the range of focus is vertically stacked [from distance viewing on top to close-up viewing on bottom], our mirror surface is horizontally progressive."
Lee says that a driver's side mirror manufactured with his team's new design would feature a curvature where the inner zone is for distance viewing and the outer zone is for near-field viewing to compensate for what otherwise would be blind spots. "The image of a vehicle approaching from behind would only be reduced in the progressive zone in the center," Lee says, "while the image sizes in the inner and outer zones are not changed."
The horizontal progressive mirror, Lee says, does have some problems with binocular disparity (the slight difference between the viewpoints of a person's two eyes) and astigmatism (blurring of a viewed image due to the difference between the focusing power in the horizontal and vertical directions). These minor errors are a positive trade off, the researchers feel, to gain a mirror with a greatly expanded field of view, more reliable depth perception, and no blind spot.
To prove the merits of their design, the researchers used a conventional glass molding process to manufacture a prototype horizontal progressive mirror. They were able to produce a mirror with more than double the field of view of a traditional flat mirror.
Other wide-angle designs have also been proposed, but the new design described January 28 in the Optics Letters paper offers a particularly easy-to-manufacture approach to the problem of blind spots by seamlessly integrating just three zones.
The researchers claim that the manufacturing cost of their proposed mirror design would be cheaper than the mirror design with the added small wide-angle viewing section. Since mirror designs are stipulated by national automobile regulations, the new design would need to be approved for use in the United States before appearing on cars here.
Share this story on Facebook, Twitter, and Google:
Other social bookmarking and sharing tools:
Story Source:
The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Optical Society of America, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Hocheol Lee, Dohyun Kim, and Sung Yi. Horizontally progressive mirror for blind spot detection in automobiles. Opt. Lett., 38, 317-319 (2013) [link]
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/TlI_Qm6Iv7c/130128104735.htm
occupy oakland occupy oakland morgellons disease arik armstead sag awards red carpet torrey pines nhl all star game 2012
Tesla CEO extends help to Boeing on battery issue
DETROIT (Reuters) - Elon Musk has long considered Tesla Motors Inc
In a January 26 message on Twitter, Musk said he was in talks with the chief engineer of Boeing's 787 Dreamliner plane, which regulators have grounded indefinitely after a string of malfunctions ranging from fuel leaks to battery meltdowns.
"Desire to help Boeing is real & am corresponding w 787 chief engineer," Musk wrote on the social media website.
Musk, who is the CEO of space transport company SpaceX, and Tesla, which aims to earn its first-ever quarterly profit later this year, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Boeing declined to comment or confirm if such discussions were taking place.
Boeing's chief 787 engineer, Mike Sinnett, has recently made presentations about the plane and its battery technology to reporters and industry leaders.
Musk's post came a week after his first dispatch to Boeing on January 18: "Maybe already under control, but Tesla & SpaceX are happy to help with the 787 lithium ion batteries."
U.S. and Japanese authorities are investigating a fire and a smoke incident with lithium-ion batteries on two separate Dreamliners in recent weeks. The 50 Dreamliners in service cannot be flown until the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration is satisfied that the problem with the batteries has been fixed. The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is still investigating what caused the first battery to catch fire.
Lithium-ion batteries are widely used in phones and hybrid cars because they are lighter and more powerful than traditional batteries. But if managed improperly, lithium-ion batteries can explode or catch fire, and some pose a greater risk than others depending on their chemical make-up.
The 787 is the first passenger jet to use lithium-ion batteries for back-up and auxiliary power. Tesla began using lithium-ion batteries in its Roadster, a two-door sports car that Tesla said could go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in about 4 seconds.
In its Dreamliner, Boeing adopted a lithium cobalt oxide chemistry similar to that used in the Roadster, which Tesla produced from 2008 until last year.
Musk, a serial entrepreneur who gained fame after selling his Internet payment company PayPal to eBay Inc
In a magazine interview with Esquire late last year, Musk was similarly critical of Boeing. He was quoted as saying, "You know the joke about Boeing: It puts the zero in being."
Musk later took pains to dismiss the story, written by reporter Tom Junod. "Junod's Esquire article had high fiction content," Musk wrote his January 26 tweet.
Junod said Musk's dig at Boeing was on tape and his story was "more extensively reported than any story on Elon that preceded it."
(Reporting By Deepa Seetharaman; additional reporting by Nichola Groom and Alwyn Scott; Editing by Alwyn Scott and Chris Gallagher)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/tesla-ceo-extends-help-boeing-battery-issue-021018479--sector.html
Who Is Winning The Election 2012 Election Coverage 2012 the blaze Linda McMahon Voting Results 2012 pbs ron paul
Monday, January 28, 2013
Does Apple Have a Fancier iPad 4 Up Its Sleeve?
stacy keibler all star game oscar red carpet daytona 500 start time ryan zimmerman oscars red carpet jennifer lopez wardrobe malfunction
Sunday, January 27, 2013
Pa. man gets drive-thru send-off after funeral
YORK, Pa. (AP) ? Mourners at a Pennsylvania fast-food fan's funeral wanted him to have it his way, so they arranged for his hearse ? and the rest of the procession ? to make one last drive-thru visit before reaching the cemetery.
David Kime Jr. "lived by his own rules," daughter Linda Phiel said. He considered the lettuce on a burger his version of healthy eating, she said.
To give him a whopper of a send-off Saturday, the funeral procession stopped at a Burger King where each mourner got a sandwich for the road.
Kime got one last burger too, the York Daily Record reported. It was placed atop his flag-draped coffin at the cemetery.
Phiel said the display wasn't a joke, rather a happy way of honoring her father and the things that brought him joy.
"He lived a wonderful life and on his own terms," she said.
Kime, 88, a World War II veteran, died Jan. 20.
Restaurant manager Margaret Hess said she knew his face and his order. She and her crew made 40 burgers for the funeral procession.
"It's nice to know he was a loyal customer up until the end ? the very end," she said.
___
Information from: York Daily Record, http://www.ydr.com
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/pa-man-gets-drive-thru-send-off-funeral-231647044.html
seabiscuit dingo nba all star weekend malin akerman jeff carter chomp national enquirer
Canada's Dextre robot refuels faux satellite from the ISS in first-of-a-kind test
Move over, Canadarm. You may have helped the space shuttle fleet repair the Hubble Telescope and build the International Space Station, but there's another robotic tool that's the apple of the Great White North's eye. Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's dual-armed mechanical "handyman," has successfully refueled a faux satellite from the ISS as part of NASA's and the CSA's joint Robotic Refueling Mission. Not only did the exercise demonstrate how satellites could be juiced up in space and have their lives extended, but the CSA says it's a first for the history books, to boot. Since 2011, Dextre completed a trio of tests to show how it could service satellites that weren't built for being pried opened in space. Late this week, NASA and CSA robotics controllers removed two safety caps from a washing machine-sized mock satellite, snipped two sets of retaining wires and pumped in a bit of ethanol. Sure, you could take a Frankenstein-like approach and cobble together new satellites from old ones, but Dextre's trials indicate there's promise for a proactive tactic that would keep existing hardware humming.
Dextre Successfully Refuels Mock Satellite and Aces a Major Test for Space Robotics
Longueuil, Quebec, January 25, 2013 - Dextre, the Canadian Space Agency's robotic "handyman" on board the International Space Station (ISS), made space history last night by successfully refueling a mock satellite on the exterior of the station. Topping off the satellite's fuel tank was the pivotal task in the experimental Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), a collaboration between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) to demonstrate how robots could service and refuel satellites on location in space to extend their useful lifetime.
For RRM, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center designed a module simulating a satellite, as well as custom power tools for Dextre. Since RRM operations began in 2011, Dextre has performed three series of tests to show how a robot could service satellites, which were designed never to be opened in space. In this latest set of operations, Dextre removed two safety caps, cut through two sets of thin retaining wires, and finally transferred a small quantity of liquid ethanol into the washing machine-sized module. The latter maneuver was particularly tricky, since handling liquids in space required perfect precision to prevent dangerous leaks. The specialized tools built for the job allowed Dextre to seal the connections between the tool and the fuel valve to eliminate the possibility of leaks. Adding to the level of difficulty was the fuel hose itself, which adds additional forces that tend to pull Dextre's hands. It took the combined skills of the experienced NASA and CSA robotics controllers to pull off this first-of-a-kind space refueling demonstration successfully and without any mishap.
RRM is a significant step in pioneering robotic technologies and techniques in the field of satellite servicing-saving ailing space hardware by refueling or refurbishing them before they become space debris. The ability to refuel satellites in space could one day save satellite operators from the significant costs of building and launching new replacement satellites. With over 1100 active satellites currently operating in the near-Earth environment (many of them worth hundreds of millions of dollars), and an additional 2500 inactive satellites still orbiting around our planet, the savings could be substantial.
Via: CNET
Source: Canadian Space Agency
Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/01/26/dextre-robotic-refuels-satellite/
tourettes gonzaga rosie o donnell soda bread recipe vanderbilt evan mathis staff sgt. robert bales
Saturday, January 26, 2013
GOP senators will oppose VA electoral change
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) ? The prospects appear doomed in Virginia this year for Republican-backed legislation that would replace the state's winner-take-all method of apportioning presidential electoral votes with one that awards one vote to the winner of each congressional district.
Virginia is the first of several states carried in November by President Barack Obama where the Republican-controlled legislature is considering measures to replace the winner-take-all allocation of electoral votes. The Virginia legislation survived a state Senate subcommittee on a 3-3 vote this week, but two Republicans on the full committee said Friday they would oppose the bill when it comes up for a committee vote next week, effectively killing it.
And should it clear the legislature, Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell announced Friday he opposes it. Spokesman J. Tucker Martin said McDonnell, a Republican, "believes Virginia's system works just fine."
Similar legislation is pending in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who was re-elected to a second two-year term Friday, endorsed the concept last week. Other GOP leaders have expressed support for the idea as a way to rebound after last fall's defeats.
Nebraska and Maine now award one electoral vote to the winner of each congressional district, and the other two to the statewide winner. If other states were to follow this model, it could dramatically change the way Americans elect their president. In the current political climate, it also could put Democrats at a disadvantage in states Obama won but where Republican legislatures drew congressional district lines to maximize GOP performance.
In the November election, Obama won the popular vote with 65.9 million votes, or 51.1 percent, to Republican Mitt Romney's 60.9 million, or 47.2 percent. Obama won the Electoral College by 332-206.
In Virginia, Obama received nearly 2 million votes, or 51.1 percent, to Romney's 1.8 million, or 47.3 percent. Obama won all 13 Virginia electoral votes, becoming the first Democrat to win back-to-back presidential elections in Virginia since Franklin D. Roosevelt. Obama benefited from a huge turnout in urban and suburban areas around Washington, D.C., and Hampton Roads while Romney dominated more conservative rural ones.
Had state Sen. Charles Carrico's bill to allocate electors by congressional districts been in place, Romney would have won nine electoral votes to Obama's four.
Democrats, a minority in both the House and Senate in Virginia, decried the bill as a Republican power play to rig elections and steal with a legislative majority what they could not win with the ballot. They contend the measure is just one piece of an overall legislative package intended to burden disadvantaged voters who support Democrats.
Under Carrico's bill, the winner of the presidential vote in each congressional district would be awarded one electoral vote, and the candidate who won a majority of the districts would get the other two electoral votes.
Republican Sens. Jill Vogel of Fauquier County, who abstained from voting in the subcommittee, and Ralph Smith of Roanoke County said Friday they would vote against the bill when it appears before the full committee.
Vogel, a former Republican National Committee election lawyer, said she saw no problem with the bill's legality, but objected to the image it creates for her party so soon after Obama's victory last fall.
"It's the timing of it," she said. "It's just an awful impression it makes."
She said she abstained in the subcommittee vote as a courtesy to Carrico.
Smith said the measure violates his sense of order and fair play.
"I think every state needs to have the same plan. Two states do it already, but that doesn't make it right," Smith said. "More important than the interests of either party is a level playing field."
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/gop-senators-oppose-va-electoral-change-180550098--election.html
jessica capshaw seattle times seattle times walker recall censor pipa and sopa sopa pipa
Powers of prophesy: Davos looks to the future
Participants walk inside the Congress Center during the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Keystone/Jean-Christophe Bott)
Participants walk inside the Congress Center during the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Keystone/Jean-Christophe Bott)
Professor of Economy at the New York University, Noureil Roubini, gestures as he speaks during a session on Pundits, Professors and their Predictions, of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Saturday, Jan. 26, 2013. (AP Photo/Michel Euler)
DAVOS, Switzerland (AP) ? Forget the endless debates about the euro or government debts. What does the future hold?
The World Economic Forum at Davos is always a showcase for new research, trends and ideas. And those at the annual gathering of the world's elite don't shy away from making predictions, even if they missed foreseeing seminal events like the Great Recession or the Arab Spring revolts.
Here are some predictions from this year's participants:
WEATHER AND WATER
Climate change will lead to more and more extreme weather, which will cause tremendous economic upheaval, predicts New York University economist Nouriel Roubini.
"It's not just that New York is going to be underwater 30 years from now," he said, referring to the devastation caused last fall by Hurricane Sandy.
Oxford University physicist Tim Palmer ? who said as a scientist he preferred probabilities to prediction ? noted there is a 10- to 15-percent chance that the Earth will warm by 6 degrees Celsius within a century, leading to "catastrophic consequences for humanity" ranging from extreme weather to rising seas.
Vali Nasr, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said many countries will start running out of water in the coming years.
"Water is the new oil," he said.
A TECHNOLOGICAL SURGE
Laura Tyson, a business professor at the University of California at Berkeley, said one of the great concerns should be "the employment effects of technology," with so many jobs being rendered obsolete by scientific or technological advances.
Discussions of such advances were everywhere at Davos.
Sebastian Thrun, a computer science professor at Stanford University and leader of Google's Self-Driving Car Project, said he thinks Google co-founder Sergey Brin's prediction that within five years driverless cars will be on the streets used by regular people is going to happen.
"It'll be a while before they're going to be mainstream, and there'll be all kinds of interesting questions coming about security, privacy, safety of the system as a whole," Thrun said. "But if they are available within five years for general consumers, I think within 15 years you ought to be able to buy one of those."
MENTAL ILLNESS UNDERSTOOD
Edward Boyden, an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who directs a neural engineering research group, says new technologies for analyzing the brain will produce significant advances in fighting mental illness.
"Right now we know that certain cell types in the brain are impaired in schizophrenia, or bipolar disorder or autism," he said.
If scientists can develop new technologies to image the brain and control the brain's cells, he said "over the next half-century or so we should be able to really understand how these networks" generate emotion.
Then, in the case of mental illness, "we can insert information into the cells in order to re-sculpt their dynamics and fix what's broken," Boyden said.
Technology entrepreneur Eric Anderson said biotechnology and medicine "are eventually going to be information sciences, with your genes... will determine treatment."
THE LIGHTEST STUFF
Julia Greer, an assistant professor of materials science and mechanics at the California Institute of Technology, says the world is craving a useful, ultra-superlight material to work with.
Her research group collaborated with Hughes Research Lab (HRL) and the University of California, Irvine, to recently develop the world's lightest solid material. She predicted that in 10 to 15 years it will be used as fuel cell catalysts, as acoustic damping devices on submarines, as anti-reflective layers in solar cells, and as components of vehicles sent into space.
The new material, called a micro-lattice, is made up of tiny hollow tubes of nickel-phosphorous that are angled to connect ? and contains 99 percent air, Greer said. It can also be used for high-temperature thermal batteries, heart stents and blood clot catchers, she said.
On a related topic, Roy Johnson, the chief technology officer for Lockheed Martin, predicted huge advances in 3-D printing.
POWER TO THE PEOPLE
One of the most famous predictions is Moore's Law, named after Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, which says that computing power doubles every two years or so. It has proven stunningly correct so far, putting new technological devices in everyone's pockets.
But how long will this law hold? Paul Jacobs, the CEO of Qualcomm, said it's not so certain anymore.
The implications of effectively infinite computing power are staggering ? no more waiting for a power-up or a download; every song, movie and TV episode instantly available; and even the possibility of what scientists call artificial intelligence.
But Jacobs told The Associated Press that the law might be valid only "a couple of more generations."
"I'm worried. In the next couple of nodes we're going to stop getting those numbers unless somebody figures out something," he said.
YOUTH OF THE WORLD UNITE
Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, now the U.N. special envoy for global education, said huge advances in the Internet and technology are enabling young people to connect with each other and "this is opening up the world in a way that has never happened before."
"Young people are beginning to see that the gap between the opportunities and rights they have been promised and the opportunities and rights that are delivered to them is wholly unacceptable," he said at a session on the forum's sidelines. "And the sense that they are being deprived of these opportunities and rights is, I think, going to be the big motivating force over the next few years."
__
Follow Dan Perry at www.twitter.com/perry_dan
Associated PressKohls Black Friday www.walmart.com Macho Camacho Rise of the Guardians Pumpkin Pie Jack Taylor Apple Pie Recipe
Chemists and bad smells (and sulfur): A productive pairing
Of all our senses smell is still the most enigmatic, and chemists? relationship with this sense usually begins quite early in their training, much before they learn to appreciate the wonderful complexities of odor. And complex it is; while the other senses succumbed much earlier, it took until 2004 for a Nobel Prize to be awarded for work that teased out the nature of smell and the remarkable combinatorial mechanism by which the human nose senses odor.
The main quality of a chemical compound that enables us to smell it is volatility; the molecule should have a relatively low boiling point (or technically, vapor pressure) that allows whiffs of it to escape from its container and interact with the biochemical machinery inside our body. A lot of organic compounds have this quality so most young chemists encounter some kind of smell during their freshman or sophomore chemistry lab.
Smell is a powerful sense for human beings and we have inherited it from ancient creatures for whom it was an even more important guide to the external world. For most of our evolutionary history, smell was paramount in detecting mates and predators and in avoiding and locating nutritious and poisonous food. Thus it?s not surprising to find students instinctively smelling compounds during their first few days in the lab. Lab instructors have to constantly remind them to refrain from doing this since many organic compounds are toxic or at least irritating, and in due time this habit is hammered out of most future chemists by the time they enter graduate school. But the students are actually perpetuating a grand tradition of chemical research. During the early days of chemistry, when there were no techniques for determining the structure and identities of molecules, color and smell were the two main qualities on which chemists could rely on for identifying specific compounds.
This was more than just a tool for academic research; forensic investigators could often identify the presence of poisons by their smells. For instance arsenic has a garlic-like smell, and hydrogen cyanide smells mildly of bitter almonds. During the depression, New York City police recruited ?Smell Kelly?, the subway sniffer whose bloodhound-like nose could locate chemical and gas spills and dead rats.?Bad smells could also help during wartime.?During World War 1, the characteristic smells of poison gases alerted soldiers to the ominous events that were to follow. The horseradish-like smell of deadly mustard gas was often disguised by a compound named xylyl bromide which smelled, of all things, like lilac; as the historian Richard Rhodes puts it, ?thus it came to pass in the wartime spring that men ran in terror from a breeze scented with blossoming lilac shrubs?. Unfortunately not all poisons have a compelling odor. Carbon monoxide is a notorious example, and a lot of deaths from the gas occur because people cannot smell it while it?s building up around them. Sarin gas is another example; if sarin smelled like mustard, attacks like the 1995 Tokyo subway incident would be much harder to carry out. Sometimes as in case of natural gas, a potentially dangerous odorless agent can be spiked with minute concentrations of a highly smelly additive to make it possible to detect leaks. In case of natural gas that additive is methane thiol.
The skunk, a creature which has optimized its use of sulfur to the level of a culturally significant phenomenon (Image: brittanica)
Which brings us to thiols and bad smells. Write a few words in a post about bad smells and you will usually have chemists swarming the comments section offering suggestions for their own favorite bad smell. Smells can often be subjective (and culture-specific, as in case of cheese), but if you ask chemists to universally agree upon one element in the periodic table that has succeeded in snaring the title of king of bad smells, they would probably settle upon sulfur, especially in the form of thiols. Thiols ? also called mercaptans ? are compounds with a sulfur bonded to a hydrogen, an atomic combination denoted by SH. The notoriety of thiols in causing bad smells is somewhat unfair since they also contribute to the smell of grapefruit and coffee, but there?s no doubt that thiols are part of some nasty denizens of the smell world, including skunk spray and flatulence. In addition as the natural gas example indicates, the human nose is extraordinarily sensitive to thiol concentrations as low as a few parts in a billion.
Almost everyone who has an advanced degree in chemistry has smelt a thiol. My own experience with thiols dates back to my undergraduate days spent in a woefully under-equipped and safety-flaunting lab that would make OSHA investigators quake in their sterilized boots. There was one fume hood in the entire lab, and this was for housing a quaint piece of apparatus called Kipp?s apparatus that was used to generate the simplest thiol, hydrogen sulfide, denoted by H2S. H2S contributes to the classic smell of rotten eggs.
Kipp's apparatus for producing hydrogen sulfide (Image: Wikipedia Commons)
The apparatus contained a few filings of iron sulfide in hydrochloric acid. The reaction between the two chemicals generated the gas which we would bubble into test-tubes for various experiments. We never tired of chasing each other around the lab, trying to thrust the test-tubes with the repulsive odor under each other?s noses. Not once did our instructor tell us that not only is hydrogen sulfide smelly but it?s also quite poisonous. I had a similar experience in my own private ?lab? which was set up in a spare bathroom with little ventilation when I was a teenager. I used to happily dissolve safety pins and paper clips in nitric acid and watch the brownish green nitrogen dioxide gas rise up the test-tube. Nitrogen dioxide too has a very unpleasant smell and the whole house used to sometimes smell of it. Later when I started graduate school, I was quite startled to find out that the gas can be a silent killer; causing pulmonary edema until it suddenly kills you.
But back to hydrogen sulfide and thiols which generally lend a bad reputation to sulfur. Consider this post which asks whether the smell of butyl thiol is much worse than the smell of a gigantic goat cheese fire. That?s a bit like asking if death by drowning is worse or better than death by burning. The point is that whatever the other virtues or hazards of sulfur, sulfur-containing compounds which smell bad will definitely turn people into social pariahs. Here?s what happened when workers at the Esso Research Station in England were trying to make thioacetone from trithioacetone. Even if you don?t know anything about these chemicals, you should have probably seen the ?thio? in their names and guessed that trouble was waiting around the corner. Or in this case, a quarter of a mile downwind:
?Recently we found ourselves with an odour problem beyond our worst expectations. During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and, although replaced at once, resulted in an immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building two hundred yards away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of trithioacetone found themselves the object of hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant.
The odours defied the expected effects of dilution since workers in the laboratory did not find the odours intolerable ? and genuinely denied responsibility since they were working in closed systems. To convince them otherwise, they were dispersed with other observers around the laboratory, at distances up to a quarter of a mile, and one drop of either acetone gem-dithiol or the mother liquors from crude trithioacetone crystallisations were placed on a watch glass in a fume cupboard. The odour was detected downwind in seconds.?
I have seen few better examples of how you can gain instant notoriety through the wonders of chemistry. But if you think that thiols are the worst of all, think again. I will leave you with a conversation between two great twentieth-century scientists that illustrates just how bad compounds purportedly similar to thiols can be. Sulfur is followed in the periodic table by selenium and tellurium. Hydrogen sulfide smells awful and we know that elements in the same column in the table behave similarly. How might hydrogen selenium and hydrogen telluride smell? Linus Pauling (LP), widely acknowledged as the greatest chemist of the century, offered some helpful perspective to Matt Meselson (MP), inventor of the most beautiful experiment in biology.
LP: Well, Matt, you know about tellurium, the group VI element below selenium in the periodic chart of the elements?
MM: Uh, yes. Sulfur, selenium, tellurium ?
LP: I know that you know how bad hydrogen sulfide smells. Have you ever smelled hydrogen selenide?
MM: No, I never have.
LP: Well, it smells much worse than hydrogen sulfide.
MM: I see.
LP: Now, Matt, Hydrogen telluride smells as much worse than hydrogen selenide as hydrogen selenide does compared to hydrogen sulfide.
MM: Ahh ?
LP: In fact, Matt, some chemists were not careful when working with tellurium compounds, and they acquired a condition known as ?tellurium breath.? As a result, they have become isolated from society. Some have even committed suicide.
MM: Oh.
LM: But Matt, I?m sure that you would be careful. Why don?t you think it over and let me know if you would like to work on the structure of some tellurium compounds?
I suspect that most graduate students would not embark on this project, even if it meant they got to work for Linus Pauling.
Source: http://rss.sciam.com/click.phdo?i=83c2939e871dbf1854599255ae9b216a
kevin costner budweiser shootout animal house invincible jesse jackson whitney houston funeral video tyler perry whitney houston
Friday, January 25, 2013
2013 Predictions for International Business Travel, Meetings and
Sorry, Readability was unable to parse this page for content.
turbo tax katharine mcphee cold mountain valentines day ideas the villages florida egoraptor gisele bundchen
Marketing Coordinator - HigherEdJobs
The College of the Holy Cross was founded in 1843 by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in Worcester, Massachusetts. The College is a highly
selective, four year, undergraduate, liberal arts institution and is ranked among the nation's leading four year liberal arts colleges.
selective, four year, undergraduate, liberal arts institution and is ranked among the nation's leading four year liberal arts colleges.
Reporting directly to the Director of Dining, this position will develop, implement, coordinate and evaluate marketing strategies for Holy Cross Dining. The position will work with and support the department's staff to translate marketing objectives into functional department concepts and programs to reach target audiences. This position will coordinate with Public Affairs, Information Technology, and Graphic Arts adhering to preset guidelines and policies while working within a set financial framework and manage multiple projects for delivery in a timely manner.
Bachelor's degree in communications, public relations, advertising or journalism. Five or more years experience in marketing, public relations, additional related experience is desired. Demonstrated skills in strategic verbal and written communications, copy, feature and promotional writing, and coordination of publication production. Skilled in various computer software, cameras, video cameras, computer and web fluency. Creative ability in writing, graphic arts, and photography. Preferred knowledge of a college campus environment with focus on young adults.
This is a full-time, Exempt position.
A member of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium.
The College is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer and complies with all Federal and Massachusetts laws concerning Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action in the workplace.
A member of the Colleges of Worcester Consortium.
Source: http://www.higheredjobs.com/details.cfm?JobCode=175712965
the masters i robot the big c the visitor king of kings ostara andy kaufman
Greenland ice less vulnerable than feared: study
OSLO?? Greenland is less vulnerable than expected to a runaway melt that would drive up world sea levels, according to scientists who found that only a quarter of the ice sheet thawed in a warm period more than 100,000 years ago.
The study, involving 300 experts from 14 nations, implied that Antarctica at the other end of the planet would contribute at least as much or more to the kind of sea level rise that threatens coasts and cities from Mumbai to Miami.
Climate scientists are struggling to understand the risks of a melt of the vast ice stores of Greenland and Antarctica to help plan coastal protection. Sea levels rose about 17 cm (7 inches) in the past century and the rate has quickened.
-
Science news from NBCNews.com
-
Neanderthal baby spawns viral video
Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The gang at Taiwan's Next Media Animation is having a little fun with a Harvard geneticist's recent comments about the prospects for cloning a Neanderthal baby.
- How dogs adapted to our starchy diet
- Wind passes record in 2012, stinky 2013 feared
- Real-life love potion identified
-
Neanderthal baby spawns viral video
Examination of ice from a 2.5 km (1.5 mile) deep ice core in northwest Greenland indicated that its ice sheet lost only about 400 metres (1,300 ft) in thickness in the early part of the Eemian, a warm period from about 130,000 to 115,000 years ago.
They estimated it lost about a quarter of its ice overall, according to a study published in Thursday's edition of the journal Nature.
"The volume of ice lost from the Greenland ice sheet was more moderate than many had expected," lead author Dorthe Dahl-Jensen, a professor at the University of Copenhagen, told Reuters.
Some past studies have suggested that Greenland may be poised for an irreversible melt due to climate change, blamed by a U.N. panel of experts on use of fossil fuels in nations led by China, the United States, India and Russia.
The limited size of the melt was also a surprise because the scientists found that Eemian temperatures, inferred from chemicals in air bubbles trapped in the ice, were higher than expected at 8 degrees Celsius (14 Fahrenheit) above current levels.
Fossil fuels
"We'll probably reach the Eemian temperatures within the next 100 years," Dahl-Jensen said. The Arctic region is warming at one of the fastest rates on the planet; global warming of 2 or 3 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 5.4 F) might trigger an 8 degrees C rise in Greenland.
The United Nations panel of climate scientists has said that sea levels may rise by between 18 and 59 cm (7-24 inches) this century, or by more if a thaw of Greenland or Antarctica speeds up. Elsewhere, it expects more floods, droughts and heatwaves.
And there are already signs of Eemian-style conditions. In July 2012, almost the entire surface of Greenland was covered in melt water, an event witnessed by the scientists from the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Britain, Japan, South Korea and elsewhere.
"It even rained in our camp," Dahl-Jensen said.
Ice cores build up from annual snowfall and can be read like tree rings to judge their age. The Eemian warmth was probably caused by natural shifts in the Earth's orbit around the sun.
The scientists estimated that Greenland contributed only about 2 metres to sea level rise of between 4 and 8 metres during the Eemian.
That meant that at least half and perhaps much more of the melt water came from Antarctica, the planet's other big store of land ice, which, unlike the floating ice of the Arctic, causes the sea level to rise when it melts.
As yet, there has been no study of cores from the crucial West Antarctic ice sheet equivalent to the Greenland research.
(c) Copyright Thomson Reuters 2013. Click For Restrictions - http://about.reuters.com/fulllegal.asp
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50568211/ns/technology_and_science-science/
passover easter recipes live free or die hard carlos pena amanda bynes arrested f 18 jet crash in virginia beach
Thursday, January 24, 2013
Facebook's Policy For Punishing Ad Clients - Business Insider
Last September, we reported that Facebook sometimes appears to play favorites with its advertising clients, rewarding those it favors and informally punishing those who fall from grace.
Turns out we understated the case. The punishments aren't informal. They're officially listed in Facebook's rules for advertisers.
The rules include a censorship system in which Facebook vets its clients' press statements ("Please allow five business days for review," it says) and a ban on clients using certain words to describe their relationship with Facebook ("partnership," "strategic" and "commitment" are on the verboten list).
And they include the ultimate punishment for violators: being banned from the Facebook platform.
Facebook is strict
Facebook declined to comment. A source previously told us that Facebook is strict with its clients because executives at Facebook have seen agencies put out press releases claiming they can use Facebook in ways "that are literally not possible." Facebook doesn't want clients to say "Facebook didn't work for us" when those campaigns inevitably fail.
Justin Sullivan / Getty Images
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg
Nonetheless, this arrangement is extremely unusual in the advertising world. TV networks, for instance, don't ban their advertising clients from saying things about the business they do. Rather, ad clients are often courted like minor royalty, wined and dined, and treated to expensive seats at sporting and cultural events. Media providers almost never say bad things about their clients because, obviously, they are the ones bringing the money.At Facebook, however, the opposite appears to be true. If you want to spend money with Facebook, you have to follow Facebook's rules -- even though you are paying Facebook.
One of Facebook's biggest clients, TBG Digital, has already fallen afoul of those rules. It was stripped of its official Facebook "Preferred Marketing Developer" status sometime last fall for talking about new product tests in a way Facebook didn't like. TBG declined to comment for this story, but it continues to business with Facebook as normal. TBG's clients spend between $100 and $150 million a year on Facebook.
The removal of the PMD "badge" (as the status is known at Facebook) prevents agencies and marketers from using one of Facebook's official symbols to promote their business. The badges are fast becoming a sort of marketing shorthand for which companies have expertise with Facebook and which do not.
Not invited to the party
The loss of a PMD badge also prevents companies from joining Facebook's elite "Strategic Preferred Marketing Developers," a group of clients that get first look at new products.
In September, when Facebook first launched the SPMD list, four of Facebook's more prominent marketing clients ? Vitrue, Syncapse, TBG Digital, and Wildfire ? weren't at the launch party. Those clients represent several hundred million dollars in ad spending on Facebook, combined.
Instead, the party was hosted by Salesforce.com, a clear sign that Facebook in some way chose Salesforce over its rivals. (Bear in mind that there are more than 260 PMD companies, and they all do largely the same thing.)
The rules
Facebook's PMD rules include:
- Restrictions on using the PMD badge logo: "You must keep sufficient space around the badge so it appears clean and uncluttered."
- Press pre-approval and censorship: "...the following guidelines must also be observed when discussing the program publicly (press releases, articles, blog posts, etc.). Failure to do so may result in retraction of public materials or removal from the program. Developers are required to understand and adhere to the policies outlined below. All press releases must be sent to platformpr@fb.com for review and approval. Please allow five business days for review."
- Not abusing the Facebook name in press release headlines: "Any reference to 'Facebook' in the headline, sub-headline or lead must be used with the term 'Preferred Marketing Developer Program', relevant API (e.g. 'Ads API'), or a description of your technology."
- A ban on companies that break the rules: "Facebook reserves the right to grant or remove access to the Platform or PMD Program at its sole discretion."
Facebook's awkward history with its own clients
Michael Seto / BI
Facebook's Carolyn Everson
Clearly, Facebook has a legitimate interest in making sure that marketers and agencies don't misrepresent what they can do on Facebook.But at the same time, Facebook has a reputation of failing to deal with advertisers in a mature or encouraging way. General Motors, for instance, infamously yanked its $10 million ad budget days before Facebook's IPO, in a dispute about whether the spend was generating a proper return on its investment. And there was a time when ad agencies were dismayed that staff at Facebook wouldn't return their calls. An exec at Crispin Porter + Bogusky once complained, ?The Facebook policy is actually longer than the U.S. Constitution ? no joke.?
These are the people who generate Facebook's revenues, profits and newly buoyant stock price, and they expect to be treated with courtesy for doing so.
VP/global marketing solutions Carolyn Everson has made strides to reform Facebook from within over the past year. The company has gone out of its way to court big advertisers.
But still, punishing a client who spends more than $100 million on your platform? It's so aberrant as to be bizarre.
Currently, Facebook can get away with this because it's growing so fast, clients want to be on the platform, and there are so many PMDs competing with each other that each one lives in fear of having its access cut off. That situation won't last forever. Sooner or later, Facebook will hit the "big numbers" problem, when new ad dollars become harder and harder to attract.
At that point it may want to question the wisdom of annoying its largest clients.
Disclosure: The author owns Facebook stock.
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/facebooks-policy-for-punishing-its-own-ad-clients-2013-1
Chuck Hagel ncaa football irs CES russell wilson Pokemon downton abbey
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)